He looks up, his eyes shifting back and forth like windshield wipers, but can’t meet my gaze. His breath comes in shallow panting, almost heaving.
Is he on something?
From behind his desk in the corner, the store manager stacks some papers. “I’ll need to see some identification, please.”
Before I can express my annoyance for the interruption, Mike inches forward. “Of course.” He sidesteps around Angelique and me and pulls out his wallet again. He jerks his thumb toward me. “She’s his mother.”
With very little cash in my purse, I wonder if the manager will ask for reimbursement for whatever misdeeds Colton might have committed. Perhaps he will accept a postdated check.
The instant the path to the door clears, Colton jumps up and bolts through it. His howl echoes down the hallway before the outer door slams behind him.
Mike whirls around and yells, “Hey, come back here!” He takes off after him. In his haste, he knocks Angelique’s purse off her shoulder.
I dart after Mike and Colton, leaving Angelique to thank the store director and pay for any repairs or shoplifted items. It’s all I can manage to chase the sound of the screaming and shouting.
By the time I reach the front door, Mike has caught Colton in a headlock halfway across the parking lot and is preparing to push him face down. He won’t hesitate to use handcuffs. Colton cries and shoves backward with all his weight, but Mike is too strong for him.
“Stop! Stop!” I cry, crashing through the door.
“Give it up, Colton!” Mike shouts in his ear.
“Let him go!”
“Back off, Sally!” Mike growls. “I’ll handle this.”
I grab at Mike’s left arm. “You’re hurting him.”
“You all think you’re so smart, but . . . none of you . . .” My son cackles with such derision, I can’t help shuddering.
With a sharp gasp, I make myself reach to touch my son’s shoulder. “Colton, whatever you’ve done is–”
“Shut up!” he snarls.
I draw my hand back as if he tried to bite it. His voice doesn’t even sound human.
As Colton struggles to twist violently up and down, Mike locks Colton’s arms behind him. “Ready to quit, son?”
Colton collapses like a marionette with the strings cut. “Don’t call me ‘son’,” he sobs. “You’re not my father. An asshole like you could never be my father.”
“No one but Jack was your daddy, my sweet boy,” Angelique says from behind me. She grasps my hand. “Mike only wants to help you get home again. We all do.”
“I’m not going back to that house ever again!” His sobbing turns to squeaks and hiccoughs and grows louder, pushing his spiteful words into the shadows. With the heels of his hands dug into his eye sockets, he tries to cover his face.
After he stops sputtering, I swallow hard. “I know you miss your father.” I let my purse drop to the pavement. “Dad loved you very much. There’s nothing we can do to bring him back, but at least we can try to accept his death as unintentional.” I glance at Mike, who spins his head sideways as if I have slapped him. “Even if the official ruling says otherwise.”
“Dad’s death wasn’t an accident.” Colton’s voice loses its youthful pitch and assumes an air of cool maturity.
“What do you mean?” My hand flutters to my chest.
“All this time, you thought he shut the garage door and left the motor running because he was too drunk to know the difference.”
“That’s exactly what–”
“You weren’t there. Dad didn’t close the garage door.” He peers up and his eyes might as well be distant moons. As his gaze settles on me, his voice cracks. “I’m the one who shut the door. I did it. I killed my father.”
“What are you saying?” Frowning, I kneel on the asphalt in front of him. “No, you were in bed asleep when he came home. We both were. It was very late.”
“That night I got up to go to the bathroom and heard his truck in the driveway.” He picks at his bandage. “Remember the time my bike got stolen last year? You got so mad because I didn’t put it away in the garage and close the door.”
Nodding, I gulp the night air, like ice in my lungs.
“I noticed Dad’s brake lights from my bedroom window. I waited, but he didn’t close the garage, so I went downstairs. He was still in the truck, leaning forward on the steering wheel. I thought he had fallen asleep, like he does on the couch sometimes, and he’d come into the house later.”
“You must have been dream–”
Angelique’s hand on my shoulder silences me. With a pang, I mash my lips together. How many times has my stubbornness stifled Colton’s urge to talk? I wish I could call the words back. Maybe our hard year of anguish could have been softened.
“Then I pressed the button to close the door and went back upstairs.” Large drops, like iridescent crystals, shimmer down Colton’s bright red cheeks. “I didn’t know he had left the motor running.” He looks up at Mike. “I swear I didn’t know.”
His words dissolve into sobs again. I reach for him and pull him into my arms, cradling him like a baby. Racked from exhaustion, his body gives way and he loses all resistance. At last he throws his arms around my neck and nestles his wet face into my shoulder, and our tears mingle. As I rock him back and forth, he keeps repeating, “I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”
As my arms tighten around him and I brush the hair from his forehead, I wish for us to become a young mother and child again. A fresh start. A better growing up together. How could I not see what I was doing to my own son?
My mother, Saint Trixie, even Jack and all the other angels must be gazing down from heaven and crying out with great pity for us. Pity for the mistakes, the blindness, the fears, the stupidity, the hurts we inflict on each other and on ourselves, the love we withhold. Maybe their combined weeping possesses the power to wash all that away. Surely, in that sanctified moment, our tears do.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Angelique sits in the front passenger’s seat of Mike’s patrol car, while Colton and I climb in the back. Strange how it reassures me when he clings to me, as if he won’t be able to breathe without holding on. I cradle his shoulders across my lap, rest his head in the crook of my arm, and let him sleep. Before he dozes off from sheer exhaustion or the pain medication, he wraps his bandaged arm around my neck like a vine.
I have no reason to talk on the return trip to Mason’s Crossing and feel grateful the others choose silence, too. All the words that make a difference have been said. Tomorrow there will be other words, and we will deal with them then. Somewhere, God knows how, I will find strength again.
Soon the monotonous hum of the tires and the warm air from the car’s heater make me drowsy, too, and my head bobs against the padded headrest. I can’t tell if I dream or not.
Clyde and my father stood talking together in the garden. The expressions on their faces looked serious and I was worried something was wrong. I left Esmeralda, still barefooted after all these months since she lost her shoes at the airfield, in the breakfast room. As I walked to the back veranda, I still couldn’t hear them.
I crept down the steps and followed the garden path. As I came around the corner to join them, a little boy jumped from behind a bush about ten feet in front of me. We didn’t get many visitors to our house, but other children have never been allowed. I stopped. “Hey, where did you come from?”
He looked at me with large dark eyes. We were about the same height, but he was skinny. His legs were too long for his pants and he wore sneakers without any socks. I was glad I left Esmeralda in the house. He probably wouldn’t want to play dolls with me.
The boy didn’t answer my question. Instead, he came up to me and squeezed my curls like they were a sponge.
I pushed his hand away. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Just checking to see if they’re real.” He smirked. “Your hair’s so bouncy.”
I laughed. “Want to ra
ce?” I pointed to the other end of the path.
“How far?” he asked.
“All the way to the wall.”
“And back?”
I swallowed. “Sure.”
He lined up beside me. “One, two three, go!”
I should have changed into sneakers before I came outside. My Mary Janes were no match for his Keds, broken shoelaces and all.
We thundered past Clyde and my father, who called our names. We ignored them until the return leg. The boy kept running but I stopped because there was a third grown-up standing with the men. A lady who also looked very serious.
“I win! I win!” the boy yelled from our starting point.
I waved at him to come back to where I stood. He walked very slowly, like he was marching in a parade wearing heavy boots.
“Sally, come here,” said Daddy.
I went to stand next to my father.
“This is Mrs. Avery,” he said. “A friend of Clyde’s. She and her son have moved to Mason’s Crossing.”
No one mentioned a Mr. Avery. The last time I had asked someone a personal question, I got in trouble with Aunt Mary, so I shook her hand, the way Mother had taught me. “Pleased to meet you.”
Clyde beamed as the boy approached. “And this here’s Mike. He’ll be in your grade at school.”
I looked at the boy and hoped he ran better than he spelled. I didn’t want to give up my first place in the school spelling bee for sixth graders.
Clyde put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “And Mike, this is Sally. Y’all should become good friends.”
The boy bowed from the waist, like he was asking me to dance, the way I’d seen in the movies. I hoped he wasn’t going to be this stiff and silly all the time.
“Would you like to see my playhouse?” I asked.
He nodded. I took him to the other side of the garden, away from the adults, and showed him what Daddy had ordered for me a few years ago, built maybe as soon as I learned to walk. My playhouse had a gate, a drawbridge over a painted moat, and towers in each corner. Mother said they’re called ‘turrets.’
“Are you a princess?” Mike asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“You must be.”
Bright lights wake me up, as Mike slows the car to turn into an all-night gas station. “Fifty miles to go,” he whispers over his shoulder. “Are you all right?’
I nod and smile, shifting my body slightly, trying not to disturb Colton. He moans softly, but doesn’t awaken. The medication holds steady.
Angelique turns around in her seat. “Need anything?”
I’m okay, I assure her. My joints have gone rigid, but if Colton and I turn petrified before we reach Mason’s Crossing, it won’t matter. I wouldn’t mind being set in stone with my sleeping son, like a modern Pietá.
Once we get under way again, Mike’s firm hand on the wheel somehow comforts me. The drowsiness returns and I drift in and out of awareness of the miles we cover.
It was not my birthday, but Clyde brought me a gift, something he’d never done before. He said it was to thank me for being so nice to Mike and helping him get settled at school. I told him Mike was good at sports and right smart enough, plus he was polite to everyone. The principal had already let him be captain of the safety patrol.
I couldn’t imagine what was in the unwrapped package Clyde held. We sat in the swing on the front porch, the same place we had sat together when we first met.
I was too excited to keep seated, so I stood in front of Clyde as he balanced the box on his lap. He watched while I pried off the lid. Tissue paper hid the contents and I poked my fingers down in it until they touched something solid. I pulled the object out and held it up. A pair of red leather shoes dangled from a cord, but they were no bigger than my thumb. “New shoes for my doll?”
“Miz Cromwell helped me buy these. I thought Esther would like ‘em, since she lost the last pair.”
“Esmeralda will be quite happy to wear them.” I didn’t care that he never got her name right, as I leaned up to kiss his rough cheek. “Thank you very much.”
Clyde stood up with effort. He put his arms around my shoulders and gave me a hug. Maybe I loved Clyde because he cared about children, or at least he thought I was special. He smelled like Ivory soap and pine trees. After a moment, he let go, and then rested his hands on my arms. “Take care of your daddy, will ya?” His eyes turned wet in the corners as he blinked very fast, like he had gotten something stuck in his eye.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “You look sad.”
“Nothing.” He picked up his jacket from the bench. “I got to be going. Tell Mike I’m proud of him.”
“Why don’t you drop in at our school? You can see for yourself on Parents’ Day how good, um, how well he’s doing.”
But Clyde was already halfway across our lawn, walking toward the street where he had parked his truck. I wondered why he didn’t pull up in the driveway like always. “Bye, Clyde. See you tomorrow,” I hollered.
When he didn’t turn around and answer, or even wave at me, I dropped the little shoes on the swing and jumped down the front steps. The truck’s engine roared and I ran faster to the edge of the lawn. He never heard me call his name.
As I strolled back to the porch, I hoped he would come to visit our school. Mike would like that okay, I guessed, but I would’ve been proud to hold Clyde’s hand and take him around the classrooms and the hallways. I would’ve introduced him to all the teachers and the principal and the cafeteria ladies.
He could have sat in the empty seat reserved for Mother or Daddy. And I could have pretended to be like all the other kids.
After he turns on my street, Mike slows the cruiser to a crawl until he parks in my circle drive. He switches off the engine and looks over his shoulder at Colton and me. While Angelique waits, Mike comes around the back of the car. As he slowly opens the rear passenger door, he holds out his arms while I stroke Colton’s hair, trying to wake him up enough to move.
His sleepy weight proves too heavy for me, and Mike crouches next to me, balancing half on the back seat and half on the night air. As I scoot toward the center, Mike lifts Colton’s upper body and pulls him partway out of the car. Angelique leans across the back of the front seat to help push. Colton’s lungs let out a long ‘hmmm,’ but his eyelids don’t even flutter.
For a moment, I fear the two of them will topple over backwards, but Mike tightens his grip and stands up, catching Colton’s legs before they hit the doorframe. Mike nestles him against his chest as easily as if Colton were an infant in his father’s arms. I hold my breath and wait.
Mike whispers, “Let’s get him in the house.” He turns toward the front door. Our breaths come out in little puffs from the chilly air, as Angelique and I trail up the sidewalk to the porch. She picks up the plastic bags of dinners left by the delivery boy from Raúl’s restaurant.
Before I can get the key out of my purse and unlock the door, the grandfather clock in the foyer chimes midnight. I wish we could all turn into pumpkins, at least until tomorrow.
Once the door stands open, I gesture for Mike to follow me. The stairs creak louder than usual from the double weight. With only the hallway light for illumination, I paw the bedcovers in Colton’s darkened room and shove them back. Careful of his bandaged wrist, Mike lays Colton down gently on his side, and I pull the comforter over his shoulder. Once more I brush the hair from my son’s forehead and watch him inhale and exhale.
It takes several moments to realize the mother in me has been starving for lack of touch. Some internal artery had gotten clogged or shut off, but now it is unbound, allowing all my affection and tenderness to gush like water from a busted pipe. With my arm draped across his back, I sit on the edge of Colton’s bed until Angelique’s hand comes to rest on my shoulder.
“He’ll be all right now,” she says.
I lean around her and glance into the hallway. “Where did Mike go?”
“Can you come dow
nstairs for a moment?”
I have to pry my arm from Colton’s sleeping body. After a few seconds, I nod and follow her to the living room. Leaning against the far wall, Mike stares into the crown of his hat as he waits for us. Angelique doesn’t sit down, so I remain standing, too.
Her eyes sweep the room, like she’s trying to remember where she dropped something. “I’m leaving with Mike, so you and Colton can be home together in the morning. You two have quite a bit to talk about, all by yourselves.”
I sniffle. “I have a lot of listening to do, for a change.”
“Darling girl, I know you’ll do a good job of it.” She hugs me for a long while, tight enough that I feel warmth from her hands through the padded back of my jacket. Her skin brushes soft and silky against my cheek. “Remember, there’s plenty of love inside you, enough for everything. You’ll see.” She picks up the strap of her overnight bag and drags it behind her, as if it’s the only thing anchoring her to the ground. “Mike, I’ll wait for you in the car.” Her jangly earrings flash like stars as she floats out of the room.
I stride toward Mike until we stand no more than two feet apart. “I can’t thank you enough. You’ve been so very kind, and I haven’t appreciated you properly. I don’t see how, even with Angelique’s help, I could have–”
“It wasn’t just kindness.” He fidgets with his hatband. “Look, I’ll speak to the judge and the county coroner tomorrow. They’ll definitely want an official statement about that night, but it can wait until Colton feels better. I’ll find out what else it’ll take to get this all straightened out.
“If it’s possible.”
“There you go, with those doubts again,” he teases. “Can you just put them on hold until we get some more information?”
I nod, and my gesture feels inadequate. Without another word, I rush right up to him and throw my arms around his neck. His hat falls to the floor as his arms wrap around me and we press against each other. At first, I can’t form whole sentences without feeling a flood of tears ready to burst, so I laugh and keep repeating, “Thank you, thank you.”
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